Thought it might be a good idea to make a shader suggestion tips/tricks forum for people to ask advice on for example a nice water shader or lava shader etc. Maybe we could have sub forums for individual apps like Max, Maya, Cinema etc. We all know simming is great but at the end of the day it has to be imported into an app and the shader can make all the difference :)

could also discuss the best 3rd party renderers such as final gather, brazil, mental ray as well as tips for setting up a scene.

yes, I also would like to see more informations about rendering in the forum. I am not sure, how much can be done only with text, but uploading entire project files (including light setup, not only shaders) could be very helpful.

I agree with Shaun on the issue of subdivisions of the forum. Some renderers are more standalone than others. The Maxwell renderer is such an example which has its own material system and the 3D-apps are mainly providing the geometry for it. On the other hand when we speak about the Cinema4D or Lightwave scanline renderer we are dealing with very application-specific issues, and then there is even the question of operating system which might be considered another group...